~ Living the Slow life in North Carolina

seedling update

I hope my other little artichoke seedlings make it. I bid one of them adieu this morning. Apparently I have been overwatering them. I have always had a hard time with figuring that out! I have read that they are good plants to grow around apple trees, and I’m trying to revive the little apple in the far back of the yard. I think that it was covered for years with porcelain grapes GRRR until we moved in. Bob across the street remembers that long ago it was a nice-sized tree. I also found out that he is the source of the elephant garlic that still grows in the yard. Apparently he and his wife were the ones who cultivated that garden space for a while, even though they didn’t live there.

I have a vase of dried baby’s breath next to the shelves where I am raising my “children,” so I broke off pieces of it to make little crutches for my broccoli seedlings. They have drooped over the sides of their containers and some of them are curving back on themselves now, trying to grow upright. This cannot be good. I don’t think I have ever seen broccoli with curved stems. I do hope that I can make the broccoli thing work. We eat so much of it and I was really looking forward to growing it.

Other seeds that are sprouting indoors are calendula and oak-leaf lettuce. I have a shallow terra cotta dish on the front porch. I’ll sow some salad seeds there this afternoon and see how that does.

Robert Reich wrote a good editorial about Wal-Mart and our power as consumers in the NYT yesterday.